


I’m acting

by b_kolacki



Category: Beydan - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-21
Updated: 2018-03-21
Packaged: 2019-04-05 17:34:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14049321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/b_kolacki/pseuds/b_kolacki
Summary: : )?





	I’m acting

Beyoncé is a quitter and she always has been. She’d quit ballet, tap dancing, gymnastics, beauty pageants, beauty school, she quit college. She quit her sales job, her engagement, she married Jordan and quit as his assistant. The last few were at his request. He wanted to take care of her because it was the only way he really knew how to show he cared and because he wanted her to have the time to explore her options. She thought it was really sweet of him to do, they’d been reading self-help books, watching daytime talk shows, shopping organic and fucking like rabbits. It felt cosmically right that she’d be with a man that could afford to let her try whatever she saw fit but she wasn’t sure what she would actually do with all her freetime. 

She decides to take up reading as a hobby because it’s accessible and she thinks she can stick to it. She starts a book club with the wives of Jordan’s friends and it’s fun for a while but it spirals into a weekly gossip and complaining session and, sure, she still goes, but they don’t do much reading. 

She takes up tennis, she’s piss poor at tennis and it feels like an awful one percenter/Anglo-Saxon thing to do and three sessions in she’s calling Jordan while he’s at work, voice full of tears, nose dripping snot because she fell and bruised her knee and needs him to come home and nurse her back to health. So, maybe she’s not an athlete but that’s fine because she gets a phone call that has her thinking she might have the knack for wedding planning.

Her sister is engaged to a boy she met in college named Andy, he’s funny and sweet and he makes her happy which is all Beyoncé can ask for really. A couple months before, when Solange called her and told her she was pregnant, she couldn’t force herself to be excited because she really wanted to have her mother’s first grandchild. They fought, Beyoncé was wrong and she admits to it. They have a baby girl named Andi and she looks like their mother when she was small with hints of Solange here and there. Beyoncé wants to make it up to her sister so she asks Jordan to pay for the wedding and of course he’s on board because he’s generous like that. She’s good at it, she transforms her own backyard, it’s an elevated realization of who she knows her sister to be and a welcome to who she’s becoming. She thinks she might’ve done a better job than the lady who planned her wedding. 

Jordan cradles their niece, who can barely babble or hold her head up, in his arms the entire ceremony and it gets Beyoncé thinking; she could plan weddings but not everyone was going to be as easy going as her sister. She only cared so much because she was doing it for someone she loved. Jordan’s really good with babies, she never noticed before and he looks so nice and handsome with one in his arms. She babysat her cousins growing up and she thinks, they’ve got so much love between them it’d be selfish not to give it to someone else.

“I want a baby.” She says, while Jordan has a forkful of wedding cake in his mouth and a wet spot from where Andi had drooled onto his shirt. 

“Huh?” He says after choking on said forkful of cake.

“We would be great parents.” It’s mango with coconut shreds mixed into the buttercream icing because a year before Solange tried it during spring break and came back gushing about it.

“Yeah, but, now?” It was extremely hard to find. She called nearly 20 bakeries trying to find someone to make it.

“Yes, now.” Are normal people this dedicated? She doesn’t think so. You have to have a level of thoughtfulness.

“Why?”

“No time like the present and it’s not like we’re doing much in the way of preventing it.” Thoughtfulness and persistence were great parental traits. She read that somewhere.

“I’ll think about it.” Her mind is settled on it.

She doesn’t press him anymore for a while, not verbally, she just subscribes to monthly parenting magazines, and when she goes shopping with his credit card she buys a few miscellaneous baby items so he can see the baby stores show up on the statement. Soft bottomed shoes, hats, a baby mobile with no crib to attach it to all sitting in a big empty room in their house where she’s started calling him into it to look at paint swatches in spring colors that she thinks would go good with the hardwood floor. 

“I want a rocking chair.” She says, after bringing home cans of muted lime colored paint.

He’s tired from work and he kisses her forehead, hands in his pockets. He has to know by now she’s not just asking for a rocking chair. “We’ll go looking for one.”

The month after that she’s sick. Throwing up chunks and having to fight sleep every couple of hours. She and Jordan sit in the doctor’s office holding each others trembling hands because now he’s started to want this too. She’s five weeks along, they’re elated. Jordan’s especially proud of himself. They get milkshakes to celebrate and she finds out later that she can’t stomach dairy anymore which sucks but it’s worth it. A few months pass by and now there’s a long list of things Beyoncé can’t eat. She’s sore all the time, and itchy, and cranky and she doesn’t want to do anything but sit in bed with Jordan while he rubs cocoa butter into the stretched out skin of her belly. Her book club friends tell her not to worry about the marks because they can be lasered away and she has the business card of the doctor she should call. A couple more months pass by and she can’t imagine getting any bigger, she’s waddling everywhere and Jordan can’t love her anymore it seems. She goes into labor a little early and Jordan’s cradling a baby girl that looks like them, you can’t say whether it’s more like him or her at this point but you know it’s theirs. Jordan loves her so much already and Beyoncé wants to make it even more special, she was born on his birthday, she has his cheeks and she wants them to share a first name. Jordan Jr. JJ for short.

She regrets it. She is essentially a cow. Except children tend to like cows, or at least, she thought they did. She can’t trust herself to predict what children like so you would have to ask Jordan because he would know. If Jordan isn’t around JJ won’t eat, or sleep, or do anything but cry because she’s clearly hungry but because Beyoncé’s the one holding the bottle she won’t take it. They tried breastfeeding and after outright refusing, JJ, with no teeth, managed to bite her. Beyoncé changes diapers and JJ doesn’t like the way Beyoncé closes the pamper no matter how she does it. All she wants is her dad and so, he stays home and sits in the nursery with JJ, in the rocking chair and he gets her to laugh and smile and stay quiet. If Beyoncé touches him, she frowns. 

He gets to kiss her belly and feed her and Beyoncé gets thrown up on. It doesn’t just last the early months, she starts sitting up and crawling and still can’t stand Beyoncé, she hovers in the corner while her husband does all the work for her. Beyoncé can’t even go to him for comfort anymore because he starts working nights so he can be home in the day so he doesn’t have much patience for anything but JJ and by time she’s sleeping, he’s getting ready for work. She’s getting rejected by two people by time JJ’s nearing one. JJ smiles at her once but it’s because she’s wearing Jordan’s shirt and she woke up in the middle of the night so he’s not there to fix it. JJ likes her grandmother and her aunt and uncles, they all come and play with her and tell her she’s beautiful and Beyoncé is having a hard time remembering the last time she hasn’t seen it tear stained and red. She loves her a lot, she wouldn’t give her back if she could but she wants to be liked.

JJ is 15 months old. Beyoncé doesn’t know why you count baby’s ages in months, she read it in one of the parenting magazines she bought but can’t be assed to remember. For the past 3 months, she’s been in bed and she’s been the one with the wet, red face and the clingy need for Jordan. They have a nanny that JJ likes so he has more free time but he doesn’t wrap her up in her arms and sing to her the way she wants him to. He goes back to working because everything’s a little off now that he’s been gone and so he has to tighten the reins. She cries about it and tries to make him stay. He tells her he can’t take care of two babies at once. She knows he doesn’t mean to hurt her feelings and she knows he’s only running away because he’s scared of how she is now. She’s always been a bit of a baby but never too sad that she couldn’t lift her head off her pillow, let alone get out of bed. 

Her mood swings into the other direction the month after and she can’t stand being in the house, she’s shopping all day and at night trying to catch Jordan when he’s not tired so she can pester him for sex. He tells her she needs a new hobby.

“You are my hobby.” She’s kissing his neck and trying to get him hard and it’s not working as fast as it usually does.

He grabs her by the shoulders. “I’m not a hobby, I’m your husband.”

“Whatever you say.”

He won’t let her kiss him anymore. “I mean it, baby you should find something fun to do.”

There’s a theatre class at the community college the next town over and she takes the bus over because she thinks it’ll be fun to people watch. She’s sweaty and tired looking and her skin is still dimpled and stretched in places where it hadn’t been before. She’s nervous because it feels like everybody that recognizes her will expect her to have it together and she doesn’t yet.

She gets there early. The instructor’s still writing the date on the whiteboard. 

He doesn’t turn his head to look at her, noisily tripping over the heel of her boot and squeezing to the back row of seats.

“Sit in the front.”

She bumps into another chair. “The front?” He turns around and his eyes are big and a pale shade of blue that makes her feel translucent because they don’t let up.

He points to the seat in the center. “Front.”

“I don’t think I’d be comfortable in the front it’s my first time.”

“You’re making the mistake of thinking that I consider you special enough to single you out. I know it’s your first day, you got here first. Sit in the front.”


End file.
